Phil Sharpe’s ability in the slips earned his career as an England player

Late Yorkshireman and Keith Fletcher will always be linked after the events of the 1968 Test against Australia at Headingley

England's Keith Fletcher, left, Mike Selvey and John Lever relax by the pool at the Centaur Hotel in Bombay during January 1977 and en route to Madras. The tourists won the series against India 3-1.
Photograph: Patrick Eagar

The fourth Ashes Test of 1968, at Headingley in late July, was as mundane a match as they come. According to Wisden’s report, Australia, the holders of the Ashes and, with a win in the first Test at Old Trafford, a match up in the series, set out with the primary intention of securing a draw and on a slow, low pitch, duly managed it to retain the urn. Each side had a chance to win, the almanack goes on to say, but “neither had the courage to take it”, which sounds harsh on Australia and a bit sour-grapeish given that it was England who needed to win.

For all that, the match in question retains an infamy in the Broad Acres, not so much for the dull way it was played but for what we, or rather Yorkshiremen, might call the sin of omission.

In the lead-up to the game there were injury worries, in particular to the captain Colin Cowdrey, and should he not be fit the contingency was that the side would be led by Tom Graveney. He too became a doubt and thus, although there had already been cover selected, even as he was about to take guard for Yorkshire against Essex at Westcliff, Phil Sharpe was called away from that game into what had expanded to become a 14-man squad.

Sharpe is one of the few cricketers whose lasting fame and reputation within the game centres not on prowess as a batsman or bowler, commendable as that may be (he was a consistently excellent performer at county level) but as a fielder – the great South Africa cover point Colin Bland springs to mind, Australia’s Paul Sheahan another – who was to take more than 600 catches in his career, the vast majority in the cordon.

Sharpe’s skill was in being one of the greatest of all slip fielders, and in the fact that in 1963 he was selected to play against West Indies for this above any other consideration (England had been shelling catches with the alacrity of a cockney dropping aitches), he may be unique. The experiment lasted six Tests, in which he made 396 runs at 49.5 (which hardly seems to justify Wikipedia’s assessment of “mediocre”) but took only four catches. He was to return in 1969 for a further six in which he took 13 more chances.

Back, though, to 1968 and Headingley, his home ground. There was another player in that squad, too. Keith Fletcher had yet to play a Test but with Graveney fit after all, and Fletcher in the original group, it was he rather than Sharpe who was named in the final XI, much to the chagrin of the Yorkshire public. In thus omitting as fine a catcher of the ball as the game has seen there was, of course, an inevitability about what followed.

Fletcher was an accomplished catcher himself, if not close to being in Sharpe’s league, but perched at first slip there were a number of chances that came his way early on, none of which he grasped.

None was easy by all accounts but with Sharpe’s omission the opprobrium began that was to be heaped on Fletcher’s head on every Headingley visit until the end of his career: Sharpe would have taken them, they said (and they were probably right). Fletcher’s name became synonymous with hamfistedness, an easy butt for comedians. With equal inevitability, as if things needed compounding, Fletcher then made 0, caught behind off the bowling of Alan Connolly. The game can be cruel.

And now happenstance, one part of it extremely sad, the other cause for celebration, links Sharpe and Fletcher still. The email release from Yorkshire County Cricket Club pinged through mid-morning to say that following a short illness Sharpe had passed away in hospital, aged 77.

There was a glowing tribute from the Yorkshire president Dickie Bird, a contemporary of Sharpe in their formative years together at the club: Dickie is an emotional man at the best of times and will feel it deeply and obviously.

How poignant, though, that on the day of Sharpe’s passing Fletcher should reach his 70th birthday, joined in his celebrations by many of his former colleagues from his Essex days. If experiences against that county from back then are anything to go by it will be a manic occasion. I have a particular affection for The Gnome (the name stems from a pair of winkle-pickers he wore, which curled up at the toes) as he was my first room-mate on tour and generally showed me the ropes. So happy birthday to the best county captain I ever saw.